


The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

by FloraStuart



Category: White Collar
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-05
Updated: 2012-10-05
Packaged: 2017-11-15 16:34:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/529325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FloraStuart/pseuds/FloraStuart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The sharks have been behind them for months, now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

**Author's Note:**

> Pre-series shark fic! Spoilers through 4.10.

“I don’t like this.”

Neal looks up from his sketchpad, where he’s spent the last three hours outlining some hypothetical heist never to be attempted. The great Neal Caffrey’s last plot, a window into his thoughts just before his untimely and tragic demise, a teasing memento left for Agent Burke to puzzle over.

“What’s not to like?” he asks, and Kate is proud of herself for not kicking sand at him.

She’s wearing a ridiculous string bikini that leaves her barely enough room to hide so much as a bobby pin. The sun hasn’t let up all day; it’s low enough now to slip under her wide-brimmed straw hat, half blinding her as it drags heavily toward the water, spilling liquid gold along the tops of the farthest rollers. It’s nearly half past seven and the air is only now starting to cool.

The fine white sand holds the heat in; Kate can feel it through the thin beach towel sticking to the sweat on her thighs.

She’s escaped without sunburn - Neal was _very_ thorough about applying the sunscreen, earlier - but she’s got sand in places she doesn’t want to think about and she’s feeling more and more exposed the longer they sit out here. The rest of the beachgoers are slowly packing up their picnics and their plastic sand castle molds, calling to reluctant children.

A wet brown dog lopes by, splashing in the lacy wave-edge, leaving a trail of blurred pawprints. Wind tears across the distant parking lot, tumbling gusts barreling down the dunes and racing unhindered to the water, dragging Kate’s hair in front of her face and rustling the sharp, grey-green dune grass as they wait for dusk.

_It’ll be more realistic that way,_ Neal said. Dawn and dusk are prime hours for shark attacks.

It’s been eight months.

August is fading and summer is coming to an end; she’s tired of sticky heat and motel rooms without air conditioning and the constant need to move, move, _move_. Since she first met Neal Caffrey - the real Neal Caffrey - she’s helped him steal three paintings and a truckload of rare artifacts; she’s made her own drivers’ licenses under three different names from three different states and she’s forged two US passports.

She’s barely twenty-four and it’s been four years since her father died and eight months since Adler left, taking all her savings and shredding the stable foundations of her world. Since then she’s run all the way across the country with Neal, embracing the glitter and the glamour and the knife-edge uncertainty of his life, slicing a gaping hole through all her old illusions, her old inhibitions and her old safety nets. 

The sun throws a rosy glow across the sand, mother-of-pearl pink against ribbed clouds stretching over the horizon, red fire caught glistening in the wet cap of a stranded jellyfish tangled with a clump of seaweed.

Somewhere along the way the reckless anger that drove her to this life has burned out, leaving only a dull cold fear and a twitchy wariness. The heists have since given way to a long straight flight, out to the edge and the end of the road; Neal is the only constant she has left and now they’ve got him at bay, his back to the water, between the devil and the sea.

All the hunters come out at dusk.

“What is there really _is_ a shark?” she demands for the fifth time.

A sinking twist in her stomach tells her more than summer is ending; today they’ll steal only distance, between them and pursuit. A few more months, perhaps, to be together.

“The boat’s already out there,” Neal says as she stands. She shakes sand out of a long blue-green patterned towel and drapes it over one shoulder, leaves her hat behind. “The pilot’s watching. If anything’s there, he’ll see it.”

The boat is a tiny white speck bobbing through slate-blue waves, coming up the coast from the marina, barely distinguishable from the cloud of gulls diving in ragged formation toward the surf.

The sharks have been behind them for months, now; the feds can smell blood, too, and they know their prey is running out of ground to go to.

Once she’d thought they were running toward a glamorous future; now she wonders if it’s only a heady, reckless rush about to come to a crashing halt, a golden dream that could only ever burn bright at both ends and then burn out.

Neal tucks the sketchpad into his pack as he stands and there’s a hint of a smile playing at the corner of his mouth, one she knows too well.

“Tell me you didn’t leave some kind of cryptic clue in there for him.”

“Would I do that?” He only grins at her glare. “I think he likes me.”

“No, he doesn’t.” With the crowds nearly gone the sounds of the sea return, the steady rushing heartbeat of the waves and the gulls’ song, high and thin and wild. “He wants to lock you up.”

Neal starts to stretch, winces at the pull on the angry red line of stitches across his chest. Mozzie’s work; the feds cornered Neal in an upstairs cafe only a day and a half ago and he jumped out a window, fell two stories into a dumpster and cut himself on God only knows what. Real medical attention was out of the question, but Moz has antibiotics waiting at the next safe house once they’re out of here.

_If_ he makes it out of here.

“I won’t visit you in prison,” she tells him.

He covers the hurt look quickly, this time; it’s not the first time she’s said it. The first three or four times she thought she meant it. Now it’s a con, and he _knows_ it’s a con, a futile attempt to scare him into being less reckless with his life and freedom, but it still hurts him to hear her say it.

He flashes a grin; it’s too bright to be sincere. “I don’t plan to go to prison.”

It hurts her to watch him thumb his nose at the feds. It hurts her to see the bruising on his chest, to watch the puffy red line of Mozzie’s stitches stretching as he turns; it hurts to think of him swimming out to sea in the half-light, blood in salt water and sharks at dusk.

She catches his hand and laces her fingers tightly through his as they walk toward the water. She leans her head against his shoulder and they walk slowly, toes digging into warm sand, putting on a show for the remaining tourists; a pair of young lovers, wrapped up in each other and the thrill of the ride, heedless of the danger ahead. So they’ll be remembered by witnesses, after.

She wishes the picture didn’t feel so painfully accurate. She can’t say she regrets anything. But she feels like something is ending and she wants to hold on and she doesn’t know how.

The plan is simple enough; they’ll swim out together and then he’ll go under, coming up on the other side of the boat while she screams and splashes her way to shore, making as much noise as possible in the process. 

She’ll show his picture to the lifeguards and the police; the feds are close enough behind them, now, that someone will have seen him on a wanted poster. She’ll be questioned; she might even be arrested.

Broken shells crunch beneath her feet, strewn in a wide mosaic strip at the waterline, shards of white and dull amber and sunset pink. She stops and Neal turns toward her, resting both hands on her shoulders.

He says, “I don’t like running and leaving you to get caught.”

She can’t say she likes it, either; she’s been questioned by the feds before, when the Adler scam first broke and everyone assumed she must have been involved, but she’s never been handcuffed. But she knows they can’t hold her; they’ve got nothing to charge her with. She’s not the known bond forger facing a minimum of four years. And Mozzie has vouched for both the coroner and the pilot of that boat; the story will hold up, and they’ll have to let her go.

If he makes it, Neal will be waiting for her at a safe house ten miles up the coast, three days from now.

“You said it yourself,” she reminds him. “They’ve got nothing on me. What are they going to do?”

They’ll try to intimidate her. But she’s not the scared, naive girl they tried to threaten eight months ago, left lost and confused in the wreck of Adler’s financial empire. That girl is gone, and the woman in her place knows certain hard-won truths can be relied on.

She knows the world is made up of two kinds of people, and she may end her days in prison but she will never be a mark again. She knows the law has never been on her side, and justice is for those who can afford to buy it. She knows Vincent Adler will never be made to pay for what he took from her; she knows he’ll never see the inside of a cell.

And she knows Neal Caffrey loves her.

He brushes sweat-damp hair back from her forehead. “Still feels wrong.”

His eyes are impossibly blue against the waves; moments like this he’s so open and painfully vulnerable she can’t imagine how he cons anyone.

“I don’t like swimming away and leaving you to get mauled by the shark, either.”

Half a quirk of a smile, and he leans forward to kiss the corner of her mouth. “The shark’s not real, you know.”

She knows she’s not ready to survive in this world on her own, yet; she has too much still to learn. 

“Hey.” His voice drops and he leans closer, bumps his nose against hers. “This is _not_ the closest I’ve come to getting caught.”

And God help her, she knows she loves Neal, whether he’s leading her toward a luxurious future or another twenty years of sleepless, stiflingly hot nights in cheap motels listening for police cars coming up the highway.

“I won’t visit,” she says again, and he hides the cut behind a smile like sunlight flashing off the waves.

“Yeah, you will.” It’s the first time he’s called her on the lie.

“I don’t want to.” She catches his shoulder with her hand, shoves him back a step; she can’t take this kind of honesty right now. “I don’t want to have to.” She’s still getting into the space she needs to find to sell the story to the cops, preparing to craft a lie his life depends on; she can’t afford for him to lay her open like this now. “ _Dammit,_ Neal.”

He says, “I love you.”

He runs his fingers gently down her arms, takes her hand in both of his and leans his forehead against hers; she’s trying to stave off fear, holding onto exasperation and frustrated annoyance, but his sudden tenderness can still undo her completely.

She threads a hand through his hair and pulls him in for a long kiss, tasting salt and sweat and sunscreen; she pulls back and her voice breaks as she says, “Tell me this isn’t goodbye.”

“It’s not.” The sun is nearly gone, leaving a reflected trail of red light along the waves, blood in the water for anything that can smell it. “Look at me.” He brushes a light kiss on her nose. “This is _not_ the end of our story.”

A gull dives into the fringe of a wave, breaking upward and vanishing toward the horizon with a fierce shriek; she has a sudden vision of it hemmed in and caged, battering its beak against steel wires, and her gut twists up in a hard knot.

“We’re going to get out of here,” Neal says, and it’s a whisper, low and hoarse and gentle. “We’re going to make it. Together. Hole up for the winter on some island off the coast of Oregon. Mozzie’s got a safe house up there, says he’s got it all decked out for Christmas.”

She tries a ragged smile. “I’m almost afraid to ask.”

“Tinsel and holly and a real tree. And some Russian military surplus sleeping bags.”

“Any chance of a bed or some real furniture?”

“He says he’s working on that. And a stockpile of food.” At her doubtful eyeroll: “The wine should be good, though. And he says it has a fireplace. Should be cozy.”

“Probably no central heating.”

“I’ll keep you warm.”

They wade out until the sand falls away beneath their feet; she sees him wince at the salt water in the stitches. She hears the purr of the boat’s engine, faint above the grey rush of the water; a light bobs in the bow, spilling a cone of white over the side. Behind them, a few tourists are still picking up trash along the shore; someone will hear her screaming.

“The next time we fake our deaths,” she says, “I get to come up with the story.”

“Next time.” That grin lights his face like a beacon over the water. “It's a deal.”

They launch themselves toward the boat, swimming together.


End file.
